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That sense of entitlement makes me sick. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherw

That sense of entitlement makes me sick. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the effectiveness of our ads. If your business success relies on tracking everyone all the time, then you have no fucking business and should go out of business.

adamsvystun 5y ago
I would personally not agree to tracking, but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide. If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.
- danbruc 5y ago
  In principle I agree. On the other hand, are people agreeing to be tracked really aware of what they agree to and what the value of the resulting information is? Would they still agree if they knew? And this of course also requires that my choice is actually honored and I currently have very little trust in this respect, after all we already had Do Not Track and nobody cared.
- bilekas 5y ago
  This is fine, and I know some people who are aware and are happy with the ads they recieve. I do personaly have a problem with not being given the choice, also it should be an opt-in option. Privacy shouldn't be compromised and then restored after the data is already gone.
- deagle50 5y ago
  Ok, how do you suggest we achieve this? It's been over two decades now and the US govt hasn't done much.
- salawat 5y ago
  This is the kind of false choice that simply can't be allowed; similar to selling oneself into slavery or selling one's organs are not considered valid transactions. If it is allowed, the market will converge on it. Without a price and disincentive to implementing pervasive surveillance, it will be guaranteed to happen.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide I generally agree with the poster. A majority of "modern" companies that pop up have one of two strategies nowadays: 1. No sustainable business model, nothing to sell to users. Grow as fast as possible, get bought by one of the established megacorps. 2. The product is kind of there, but it is only an excuse to grab as much data as possible. Again nothing to sell to actual users. The ad business has kind of become a market that trades among themselves, they don't sell anything but the promise for others to sell more, except now companies that mainly sell ads also buy advertisements for their business. It's become a huge house of cards and you really have to wonder what the reason for their existence is. Thinking purely as a customer the fact that I have just no way to just give a company my money and in turn they'll just leave me alone with all of their useless and hostile bull** is hugely frustrating and I think they deserve to go out of business if they truly have no other way to keep the shop running. No, I do not want this single strawberry for free just for you to break into my house and photocopy as many documents as you can (and leak them to the public a few months later because you don't care a single bit about keeping your data secure)...
  - baq 5y ago
    i agree, nicely put. just a small addendum to your two points: having very little product for users to sell only works if the product is free-as-in-beer for them - and the way to get there is to sell data about users to paying customers. these are fundamentals of engagement economy: get users kind of addicted to something which has barely any value and they wouldn't pay for it if they had to and sell everything they tell about themselves in the process of using it to people willing to buy the data. due to network effects user data value grows super-linearly, so you can perceive your own data as 'worthless', but it becomes worth much more once you get data about others.
- harry8 5y ago
  > If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange. Informed consent is almost always lacking. 99.999% of people party to it do not understand this bargain. Do you fully understand it or just "in principle" - which is fine until the rubber hits the road. "All you have to agree to is being warm, sensitive and caring to our clients." Fine. Prostitution should be legal and absolutely nobody should be subject to it on that basis of understanding what they're signing up for. Properly informed consent is always crucial to this argument that people are fine with it. The dishonesty, bait and switch, ongoing secretiveness of it should not be necessary and would not happen if it were informed consent. But that consumer fraud being perpretrated 100% built google and facebook. There is not now nor has there ever been consent. Morever when consent is completely withdrawn - you delete your account - they keep a shadow account. To HELL with them and those who pretend all this is honest and above board because it just isn't.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Bancakes 5y ago
I can guarantee I never have and never will click on an ad, out of spite. I've never bought things from ads directly nor transitively. Businesses assume that every user is a customer, and have inflated profit goals. You're right about entitlement.
- machinehermiter 5y ago
  What is worse though is I have bought many products from non-targeted ads because I didn't even know I wanted the item until I randomly ran into. I loved my grandmother but targeted ads always remind me of the junk my grandma would get me for Christmas. She knew enough to be in the ball park but because she was in the ball park my taste is more picky and ultimately I never liked almost anything she got me.
layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
>That sense of entitlement makes me sick. No. It is in fact your sense of entitlement that makes us sick. Update: ok, after checking danbruc's comment history, they probably weren't arguing for tracking, and the second paragraph should be read in third person... I'll take my downvotes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- b3kart 5y ago
  Sense of entitlement for…privacy? What a world we live in.
  - crazy1van 5y ago
    I prefer privacy too. But there is something entitled about wanting to interact with a company but keep the details of that interaction secret from that same company.
  - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
    What? OP was arguing that tracking is necessary...
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      > If your business success relies on tracking everyone all the time, then you have no fucking business and should go out of business. You haven't read the whole thing.
    - jvzr 5y ago
      I think you misread OP. Paragraphs 1 & 3 are OP talking, paragraph 2 is "advertisers" talking.
      - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
        True. I've updated my comment...
  - ako 5y ago
xibalba 5y ago
Now do software users who believe they’re entitled to the labor of other people for free…
- Bancakes 5y ago
  It's a free-of-charge business model.
- danbruc 5y ago
  What are you referring to, pirated software in general? Or are you talking about ad supported software?
melomal 5y ago
I love the personal entitlement people have when using free email, free social media, free search engines and everything else to the point they are offended if they try to make ends meet by making profit. Do you think Y Combinator investments don't use tracking? You would get laughed out of a room if you said you track nothing and have a solid product. A phone call to ask about your product is tracking because it all gets recorded and noted.
- redleggedfrog 5y ago
  You have it entirely backwards. The advertisers on things like facebook should be paying the users for using the site and getting their ads in front of them. facebook is not even worth $1 a month to most people, that's why the won't charge for it, and shows it's actual value to the end user. The real benefit of facebook is to the companies trying to shill their wares on facebook.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  You're identifying the wrong problem. Users aren't upset because they can't use social media for free while not being tracked, they're upset because they can't use social media without being tracked period.
- throwawaycuriou 5y ago
  The irony you manufacture doesn't hold. Yes, these products are cheap (currently free) no small part due to the market aberration caused by the tracking and advertising. But it's not certain that they would go away if advertising had to revert to a model less driven by privacy intrusion. I welcome the day such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical, so that the market can price these offerings appropriately. Until then, why not use what exists?
  - danuker 5y ago
    > such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical The GDPR was an attempt. Guess what happened? Everyone implemented it in such a way as to appear compliant but not necessarily be compliant, and to cause maximum annoyance to the user. What the solution is here is to have an educated population and powerful privacy tools, like uBlock Origin. [1] But of course, the surveillance oligopoly is developing its own browser [2], specifically to maintain control and make it hard to implement such tools [3]. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-mode https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium... [2] https://news.softpedia.com/news/google-chrome-microsoft-edge-keep-growing-firefox-is-the-main-victim-530701.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/google-chrome-microsoft-edge... [3] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
jensensbutton 5y ago
There's an argument to be made that "tracking" has had less real world harm to humanity than the push to get rid of it. Real harm will come to people/business through loss of income due to the clamp down on tracking. Not to mention that ads are the foundation of all the content we get for "free" that we've come to rely on.
- tedajax 5y ago
  "Won't someone think of the poor businesses" is not a good argument lol.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
orangepanda 5y ago
While I dont mind some tracking and telemetry, platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now. I'm all for going scorched earth policy. Similar to how if an app sends just one spam notification, it's an uninstall and a 2 star rating.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now The frog boiling that got me to block tracking and advertising in every way available to me was the era of the advertising hyperlink (late 2000s). An article would have what looked like hyperlinks to other stories or sources but were really just links to ads for products that matched that keyword. If your cursor even hinted at hovering over them they would generate a popup with some obnoxious ad with a "close button" so small it was virtually impossible to click it without going to the advertiser site. Such sites would almost invariably spit out pop-unders, resize browser windows, and try to install browser toolbars. When that style of ad got popular I started blocking domains in my hosts file and using GreaseMonkey scripts to block ads. I haven't stopped in the decade and a half since then. I don't oppose advertising nor do I necessarily oppose tracking since at the very least I can't hide from a server's access logs. I do oppose the absolute bottom feeding of AdTech companies.

adamsvystun 5y ago

I would personally not agree to tracking, but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide. If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.

danbruc 5y ago
In principle I agree. On the other hand, are people agreeing to be tracked really aware of what they agree to and what the value of the resulting information is? Would they still agree if they knew? And this of course also requires that my choice is actually honored and I currently have very little trust in this respect, after all we already had Do Not Track and nobody cared.
bilekas 5y ago
This is fine, and I know some people who are aware and are happy with the ads they recieve. I do personaly have a problem with not being given the choice, also it should be an opt-in option. Privacy shouldn't be compromised and then restored after the data is already gone.
deagle50 5y ago
Ok, how do you suggest we achieve this? It's been over two decades now and the US govt hasn't done much.
salawat 5y ago
This is the kind of false choice that simply can't be allowed; similar to selling oneself into slavery or selling one's organs are not considered valid transactions. If it is allowed, the market will converge on it. Without a price and disincentive to implementing pervasive surveillance, it will be guaranteed to happen.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide I generally agree with the poster. A majority of "modern" companies that pop up have one of two strategies nowadays: 1. No sustainable business model, nothing to sell to users. Grow as fast as possible, get bought by one of the established megacorps. 2. The product is kind of there, but it is only an excuse to grab as much data as possible. Again nothing to sell to actual users. The ad business has kind of become a market that trades among themselves, they don't sell anything but the promise for others to sell more, except now companies that mainly sell ads also buy advertisements for their business. It's become a huge house of cards and you really have to wonder what the reason for their existence is. Thinking purely as a customer the fact that I have just no way to just give a company my money and in turn they'll just leave me alone with all of their useless and hostile bull** is hugely frustrating and I think they deserve to go out of business if they truly have no other way to keep the shop running. No, I do not want this single strawberry for free just for you to break into my house and photocopy as many documents as you can (and leak them to the public a few months later because you don't care a single bit about keeping your data secure)...
- baq 5y ago
  i agree, nicely put. just a small addendum to your two points: having very little product for users to sell only works if the product is free-as-in-beer for them - and the way to get there is to sell data about users to paying customers. these are fundamentals of engagement economy: get users kind of addicted to something which has barely any value and they wouldn't pay for it if they had to and sell everything they tell about themselves in the process of using it to people willing to buy the data. due to network effects user data value grows super-linearly, so you can perceive your own data as 'worthless', but it becomes worth much more once you get data about others.
harry8 5y ago
> If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange. Informed consent is almost always lacking. 99.999% of people party to it do not understand this bargain. Do you fully understand it or just "in principle" - which is fine until the rubber hits the road. "All you have to agree to is being warm, sensitive and caring to our clients." Fine. Prostitution should be legal and absolutely nobody should be subject to it on that basis of understanding what they're signing up for. Properly informed consent is always crucial to this argument that people are fine with it. The dishonesty, bait and switch, ongoing secretiveness of it should not be necessary and would not happen if it were informed consent. But that consumer fraud being perpretrated 100% built google and facebook. There is not now nor has there ever been consent. Morever when consent is completely withdrawn - you delete your account - they keep a shadow account. To HELL with them and those who pretend all this is honest and above board because it just isn't.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Bancakes 5y ago

I can guarantee I never have and never will click on an ad, out of spite. I've never bought things from ads directly nor transitively. Businesses assume that every user is a customer, and have inflated profit goals. You're right about entitlement.

machinehermiter 5y ago
What is worse though is I have bought many products from non-targeted ads because I didn't even know I wanted the item until I randomly ran into. I loved my grandmother but targeted ads always remind me of the junk my grandma would get me for Christmas. She knew enough to be in the ball park but because she was in the ball park my taste is more picky and ultimately I never liked almost anything she got me.

layoutIfNeeded 5y ago

>That sense of entitlement makes me sick. No. It is in fact your sense of entitlement that makes us sick. Update: ok, after checking danbruc's comment history, they probably weren't arguing for tracking, and the second paragraph should be read in third person... I'll take my downvotes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

b3kart 5y ago
Sense of entitlement for…privacy? What a world we live in.
- crazy1van 5y ago
  I prefer privacy too. But there is something entitled about wanting to interact with a company but keep the details of that interaction secret from that same company.
- layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
  What? OP was arguing that tracking is necessary...
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    > If your business success relies on tracking everyone all the time, then you have no fucking business and should go out of business. You haven't read the whole thing.
  - jvzr 5y ago
    I think you misread OP. Paragraphs 1 & 3 are OP talking, paragraph 2 is "advertisers" talking.
    - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
      True. I've updated my comment...
- ako 5y ago

xibalba 5y ago

Now do software users who believe they’re entitled to the labor of other people for free…

Bancakes 5y ago
It's a free-of-charge business model.
danbruc 5y ago
What are you referring to, pirated software in general? Or are you talking about ad supported software?

melomal 5y ago

I love the personal entitlement people have when using free email, free social media, free search engines and everything else to the point they are offended if they try to make ends meet by making profit. Do you think Y Combinator investments don't use tracking? You would get laughed out of a room if you said you track nothing and have a solid product. A phone call to ask about your product is tracking because it all gets recorded and noted.

redleggedfrog 5y ago
You have it entirely backwards. The advertisers on things like facebook should be paying the users for using the site and getting their ads in front of them. facebook is not even worth $1 a month to most people, that's why the won't charge for it, and shows it's actual value to the end user. The real benefit of facebook is to the companies trying to shill their wares on facebook.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
You're identifying the wrong problem. Users aren't upset because they can't use social media for free while not being tracked, they're upset because they can't use social media without being tracked period.
throwawaycuriou 5y ago
The irony you manufacture doesn't hold. Yes, these products are cheap (currently free) no small part due to the market aberration caused by the tracking and advertising. But it's not certain that they would go away if advertising had to revert to a model less driven by privacy intrusion. I welcome the day such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical, so that the market can price these offerings appropriately. Until then, why not use what exists?
- danuker 5y ago
  > such intrusions are rendered illegal or impractical The GDPR was an attempt. Guess what happened? Everyone implemented it in such a way as to appear compliant but not necessarily be compliant, and to cause maximum annoyance to the user. What the solution is here is to have an educated population and powerful privacy tools, like uBlock Origin. [1] But of course, the surveillance oligopoly is developing its own browser [2], specifically to maintain control and make it hard to implement such tools [3]. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-mode https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium... [2] https://news.softpedia.com/news/google-chrome-microsoft-edge-keep-growing-firefox-is-the-main-victim-530701.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/google-chrome-microsoft-edge... [3] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338

jensensbutton 5y ago

There's an argument to be made that "tracking" has had less real world harm to humanity than the push to get rid of it. Real harm will come to people/business through loss of income due to the clamp down on tracking. Not to mention that ads are the foundation of all the content we get for "free" that we've come to rely on.

tedajax 5y ago
"Won't someone think of the poor businesses" is not a good argument lol.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

orangepanda 5y ago

While I dont mind some tracking and telemetry, platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now. I'm all for going scorched earth policy. Similar to how if an app sends just one spam notification, it's an uninstall and a 2 star rating.

giantrobot 5y ago
> platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now The frog boiling that got me to block tracking and advertising in every way available to me was the era of the advertising hyperlink (late 2000s). An article would have what looked like hyperlinks to other stories or sources but were really just links to ads for products that matched that keyword. If your cursor even hinted at hovering over them they would generate a popup with some obnoxious ad with a "close button" so small it was virtually impossible to click it without going to the advertiser site. Such sites would almost invariably spit out pop-unders, resize browser windows, and try to install browser toolbars. When that style of ad got popular I started blocking domains in my hosts file and using GreaseMonkey scripts to block ads. I haven't stopped in the decade and a half since then. I don't oppose advertising nor do I necessarily oppose tracking since at the very least I can't hide from a server's access logs. I do oppose the absolute bottom feeding of AdTech companies.